Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

South of France and other coastal areas. I had a vision, you see. I saw Will,
relaxing by the sea. The problem was, with only a few days to plan it and go,
there was a diminishing chance of making it a reality.
There were commiserations from the others, and many, many stories about
pneumonia. It seemed to be the spectre that haunted them all. There were a few
suggestions as to places we could go, but none that inspired me. Or, more
importantly, none that I felt Will would be inspired by. I did not want spas, or
places where he might see other people in the same position as he was. I didn’t
really know what I wanted, but I scrolled backwards through the list of their
suggestions and knew that nothing was right.
It was Ritchie, that chat-room stalwart, who had come to my aid in the end.
The afternoon that Will was released from hospital, he typed:
Give me your email address. Cousin is travel agent. I have got him on the case.
I had rung the number he gave me and spoken to a middle-aged man with a
broad Yorkshire accent. When he told me what he had in mind, a little bell of
recognition rang somewhere deep in my memory. And within two hours, we had
it sorted. I was so grateful to him that I could have cried.
‘Think nothing of it, pet,’ he said. ‘You just make sure that bloke of yours has
a good time.’
That said, by the time we left I was almost as exhausted as Will. I had spent
days wrangling with the finer requirements of quadriplegic travel, and right up
until the morning we left I had not been convinced that Will would be well
enough to come. Now, seated with the bags, I gazed at him, withdrawn and pale
in the bustling airport, and wondered again if I had been wrong. I had a sudden
moment of panic. What if he got ill again? What if he hated every minute, as he
had with the horse racing? What if I had misread this whole situation, and what
Will needed was not an epic journey, but ten days at home in his own bed?
But we didn’t have ten days to spare. This was it. This was my only chance.
‘They’re calling our flight,’ Nathan said, as he strolled back from the duty
free. He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and I took a breath.
‘Okay,’ I replied. ‘Let’s go.’
The flight itself, despite twelve long hours in the air, was not the ordeal I had
feared. Nathan proved himself dextrous at doing Will’s routine changes under